Gretta & The Secret Underground NHL Headquarters

DC Sports Nexus ---- Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Deep beneath the streets of Toronto, Canada, there is a hidden underground bunker that is the home of the National Hockey League. Nobody is exactly sure where it is. Rumor has it that there is a secret elevator shaft at the bottom of the CN Tower. Some people think there is a secret door behind the Zamboni's at Maple Leaf Gardens. I've even heard that you can access it from a switch behind the gravestone of John Candy. I just know that the place exists, and one day I will find it.

It is from this location that the NHL makes all their key decisions such as choosing the gimmick for the all star game, adding new shapes and parallelograms to the ice, finding new ways to award losing teams points, and approving Mighty Duck's sequels. The most important job that is done at this facility is the reviewing and overturning of goals for each hockey game.

In most sports, these things are done on location. In the NFL a coach pulls a red flag out of a sock and a ref looks into Pandora's box to overturn a play. In the NBA the refs all gather around a non-HD 13 inch bubble TV to review a play off a VCR. I'm not even sure if the MLB allows play reviews, although they may on homeruns (Holy S**T. Baseball has a secret headquarters in New York City that does the same thing as hockey's HQ!)

In the NHL, one woman watches every game from a special control panel. Meet Gretta. Gretta makes minimum wage and spends most of the time talking on her cell phone and tweeting with friends. Occasionally the phone will ring and she will get really upset and give the ref on the other end attitude. Despite the fact that it is her job, she doesn't want to be bothered. Instead of actually doing her job and watching the replay, she just makes a random decision so that she can get off the phone as fast as possible and back to Facebook.

The Origins Of This Blog: Prior to this season I had only watched a handful of hockey games. I never really liked watching hockey and I pretty much hated the NHL. Coming in I knew the basics of the game from playing NHL '94 back in the day, but wasn't really aware of how the game really worked. I didn't know half the penalties, I didn't know that a few teams existed or didn't exist, and I was easily frustrated by many things that happened in the NHL. (Icing, Trapezoids, Biscuits, Twigs, Blue Jackets, Plus/Minus, Goons...AHHHH) However, when my beloved NBA was in danger of being locked out for an entire season, that was my cue to force myself to watch something that I previously semi-despised. That brings us to today. I am now a die hard Capitals fan...I now know a bit about hockey...but I still have a long way to go.